This is only a hard deadline if you have to wait until the end of the project before any money happens. This is the problem with the word "project" and, more g

This is only a hard deadline if you have to wait until the end of the project before any money happens. This is the problem with the word "project" and, more generally, with formal project management: it attempts to divide the timeline into "Before Delivery" and "After Delivery" and often it doesn't care what the world looks like other than as a bag of deliverables. That's not the only way to do it, of course, but it's the mental trap you set for yourself by thinking about things as Projects with a capital P.